(6) Certainly, those who collected the Canon or those who arranged the Au5«/(oirpi.^j;To>' may still have rightly regarded the Book of Jonah as a sj'in- bolical narrative, for they placed it in a class of writings containing other examples of symbolical character and prophetic tendency. But at a later period the book wjis frecjuently treated as if it con- tained non-si/rti/Milical history. At the same time, in examining the eWdence on tliis point, one has to exercise great caution. The autiiors in ques- tion may simply have expressed themselves with a natural brevity, as if tluy considered the history of Jonah a real all'air. This principle m;iy be applied to every instance where some clement in the Book of Jonah is merely cited. This may be the case where Jesus Christ (Mt 12^°) illustrated his burial bv the statement that it would continue only three dajs, like the sojourn of .lonah in the belly of the sea-monster. But the following .saying (¥.■"), that the men of Nineveh would, on the day of judgment, put to shame the contemporaries of Jesus, is most naturally interpreted on the pre- supposition that the story of Jonah was a non- symbolical one. StUl, the question remains whether this presupposition was merely that of the /learers of Jesus (see further, below, 6dS, p. 751''). The history of Jonah is, however, conceived as non- sifmbolieal when into the mouth of Tobit* are jiut tlie words, ir^7rfia-/iai 3iro i\6.\T](j(V 'lufas h xpo^^rjjt Tepi 'SiVfVTi (To 14'), and irdn-wt trrai. i. i\6.\riaei> i Tpo(t>rfTTit 'Iwvas (v.*). Philo, too, regarded the story of Jonah as non-symbolical, for he took pains to exphiin the marvel of the fish (Oral, ilc Jona, § 16, 21). The .same interpretation is fol- lowed in 3 Mac 6" (cf. Ktinig, Einleit. p. 483) and in Jos. Ant. IX. x. 2. According to the latter, 'lijirat ett lapabv firXfi T^t KiXtKioi ( !), and he repro- duces the whole contents of the Book of Jonah, with the exceiition of the disj^lcasure of Jonah at the sparing of Nineveh. So also in the Mislina, Tn'anit ii. l,t Bab. Ta'anit Ion, Nrd'irim 38a, where a";;^ [5'! (Jon 1*) is incorrectly understood as if Jonah had paid the price of the whole ship (.iSij nycD Sr), and had thus, in contrast to Amos, been a wealthy man. (For other pa.s.sages see B. Wolf, op. cit. p. 6). Jewi.sh tradition, how- ever, contains also the information that the history contained in the Book of Jonah was enacted in the reign of Osnappar (Ezr 4'° [.\ssurlianipal ? ]), and, seeing that the date of Jeroboam II. and that of Osnappar were dilFcrent, the rabbinical tradition spoke of two Jonahs, of whom the li'^t was of the tribe of Zebulun and the second o. the tribe of Asher (see, further, Filrst, Dcr Kanon d. AT nach
• Tliis hook wu written betoro the Knovttlon of llerod'l t«ciple (Koui,;, t:Mrilunj;, p. 478).
+ kVk Dn'i.;n nKi o~." "•< c-.i'-k kii •■"I'J •i'jhd t;|tj i»'> .(Jon SIX) 'J' o.Tbyo nM omSii.i ten
d. Uebcrlicf. in Talm. und Midmsrh, p. 33 f.). Again, in Xuineri Riiblinh, sect. IS, the Book of Jonah is called ' a book by itself and counted separately.' This, however, was simply ' because it is exclusively occupie<l with the heathen, and Israel is not mentioned in it. But that its canonicity was doubted in earlier times there is no evidence' (Wildeboer- Bacon, Origin ofCunun ufOT, 189."), 70-72). The non-symboli<al or exlerno- histurical interpretation of the story of Jou.ih is the predominating one also among the Christians of the earlier centuries (cf., inter alios, Justin Martj'r, Dinloff. c. Trt/ph. cap. 107).
(c) But gradually questions were everywhere raised about the authenticity of the ancient tra- dition, and in connexion with this began also the examination of the externo-historical interpreta- tion of the Book of Jonah. The natural clearness of Luther's way of thinking is seen in his judg- ment ui)on at least the praj-er of Jon 2'""' ' bo wohl ist ihm nicht gewesen, dass er hiitte raogen ein solches feines Liedlein dichten.' Continued ex- amination of the book did not lead all critics (see above,4 6) to a .symbolical interpretation of the story. Some reached, by means oi^ almost ludicrous * attempts, the third of the leading explanations of the Book of Jonah. This attributes a legendary char.acter to the story, and may therefore itself be called, for shortness, the legendary interpretdtiun of the Book of Jonah. Its chief representatives are the following.
.\lready (in his Einleit.* iv. § 576) Eichhorn discovered in the book the presentation of a ' Volksage.' He pointed to the fact that in 2"-, as compared with ch. 1, the narrative is 'quite interrupted, short, incomplete, and unsatisfying.' Hence he held that ' under such circumstances it is no arbitrary hypothesis to assume merely that Jonah, mounted upon the sea-monster, was driven ashore by the storm, and to regard the three da3-s' sojourn in the fish's belly as a popular clothing of this.' ' If the story of Jonah s escape upon the sea-monster . . . was handed on from mouth to mouth . . . for several centuries, how readily might it assume its present form 1 This is also in harmony with the sjiirit of the ancient world, as we may gather from the similar clothing given to similar occurrences in Greek historj-, e.g. to the history of Hercules ' (see the Greek quotations in Bochart, Hierozoicon, ii. 5, 12). The legendary interpretation is accepted, further, by Rosen- miiller (Scholia in Vet. Test., ad Jonam) ; Knobel (Dcr Prophetisimts d. Heh. ii. 37011".); de AVctte (Einleit. §291); Winer (RL, s.v. 'Jona'); V;.tke (Einleit., 1886, § 217, ' eine Legende'); Nowack [Khin. Pruph., 1897, p. 175, ' Wir haben eine I'ronhetenlegende vor uns'). Es-sentially similar is the judgment of von Orelli (1896, p. 93 f.), who saj-s, for instance, ' The marvel of the lish was certainly received from tradition,' but ' the story in its present form was written at the close of the Chaldiean or the opening of the Persian period.' But if the book simply contained a ' I'ropheten- legende,' this would in the tradition have in- voluntarily and unconsciously taken its rise, and then the evident didactic tendency of the book would not be atlequalely explained. Hence Nowack asserts that ' the author used freedom in moulding the traditional material as suited his aim.' But in that case the contents of the